Abstract

Goals.

Fullerenes have tremendous potential for human biological studies which may further lead to their therapeutic applications. Hence, it has become necessary to explore the possibility of their interference with various important cellular processes. The current study was designed to explore how the presence of fullerenes can affect the binding of DNA with different enzymes and factors involved in transcription and translation process.

Methods.

Various bioinformatics approaches and software programs were used to study the effect of fullerenes on the binding pattern of DNA with different enzymes and factors involved in transcription and translation process.

Results.

Fullerenes of different molecular weights were interacted with various transcription enzymes and factors and no significant effects were observed on transcription machinery. On the contrary, the factors involved in translation process when docked with their functional partners in the presence/absence of fullerenes display reduced activity of eIF2, eIF4A, eIF4H, eIF4G, eIF4B, eIF5B, and eEF1 with fullerenes of different molecular weights.

Conclusions.

We conclude that these molecules mostly control the translation of a number of genes. The reduced expression of these factors may cause a number of clinical pathological conditions including neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases.